The fall festival season continues and Middleburg’s 12th annual iteration is slowly revealing an impressive lineup. RaMell Ross’ lauded feature debut, Nickel Boys, will close the festival and Marielle Heller’s polarizng dramedy, Nightbitch, will play a popular Saturday evening slot. Both Ross and Heller will be in attendance for discussions of their films. The festival also announced tributes that include Maria cinematographer Ed Lachman, The Piano Lesson‘s Danielle Deadwyler, Sing Sing co-stars Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin and more.
What made me scream with joy? Wicked costume designer, an Oscar nominee for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and a Tony Award winner for Hamilton, will discuss his work on the highly anticpated musical adaptation.
Check out Middleburg’s official press release below!
Middleburg, VA, September 26, 2024 – The Middleburg Film Festival announced additional programming today for its 12th edition which will run October 17-20 including Amazon/MGM’s NICKEL BOYS as the Closing Film with Academy Award-nominated director RaMell Ross in attendance to receive the Special Achievement in Filmmaking Award and Searchlight Pictures’ NIGHTBITCH as the Saturday Spotlight film. From director Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) who will be in attendance for a post-screening
conversation, NIGHTBITCH stars Amy Adams as a woman who pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom only to find her new domesticity taking a surreal turn.
The Festival also announced additional honorees including Danielle Deadwyler who will receive the Breakthrough Actor Award for her work in THE PIANO LESSON; Cinematographer Ed Lachman for the Lifetime Achievement Award for Cinematography recognizing his long career and current film MARIA; Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin for the Impact Award for their powerful performances in SING SING, Jharrel Jerome for the Rising Star Award for his role as real-life wrestler Anthony Robles; EMILIA PEREZ composers/songwriters Camille Dalmais and Clément Ducol for the Special Achievement in Music Award and Composer Mychael Danna as the recipient of the Distinguished Composer Award.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead and inspired by real-life events, NICKEL BOYS chronicles the powerful friendship between two Black teenagers who become wards of a juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow-era Florida. RaMell Ross was nominated for an Academy Award for his debut film, the experimental documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening which chronicled Black life in Hale County, Alabama. A native of Fairfax, VA and Georgetown University alum, Ross makes his narrative feature directorial debut with NICKEL BOYS.
Danielle Deadwyler will receive the Festival’s Breakthrough Actor Award for her role in Malcolm Washington’s feature directorial and screenwriting debut THE PIANO LESSON, a film adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play. The film tells the story of a battle between siblings over a prized heirloom piano tearing that is tearing them apart. The brother (John David Washington) plans to build the family fortune by selling it while his sister (Deadwyler) will go to any lengths to hold onto it. Deadwyler is known for her portrayal of Mamie Till-Mobley in Till, which earned her Critics Choice Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and BAFTA nominations.
Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Ed Lachman will receive the Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Cinematography for his formidable body of work behind the camera following a screening of his latest film and collaboration with Pablo Larraín – MARIA starring Angelina Jolie as renown Opera singer Maria Callas. Lachman’s last collaboration with Larraín, on 2023’s EL CONDE, earned him his third Academy Award nomination. Lachman’s extensive filmography includes multiple collaborations with directors such as Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, I’m Not There, Carol, Wonderstruck, Dark Waters), Steven Soderbergh (The Limey and Erin Brockovich), Gregory Nava (Selena, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, My Family) and Paul Schrader (Light Sleeper, Touch).
Academy Award-nominated actor Colman Domingo and his co-star Clarence Maclin will receive this year’s Impact Award for their roles in A24’s prison-based drama SING SING which tells the true story of incarcerated individuals in a theater program in NY’s notorious maximum security prison where participants engage in writing, directing and acting in original stage productions – Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA). Receiving a Special Screening at the Festival, SING SING was developed in collaboration with formerly incarcerated participants, including actors playing past versions of themselves, including Maclin. Receiving the Festival’s Rising Star Award is Jharrel Jerome who plays real-life wrestler Anthony Robles in the inspiring true story told in UNSTOPPABLE from director William Goldenberg. Robles, who was born with one leg, is driven by his determination to defy expectations and pursue his dream of becoming a NCAA wrestling champion. Jerome made his film debut in Barry Jenkins’ Academy Award-winning drama Moonlight, won an Emmy for his role in Ava Duvernay’s Netflix miniseries When They See Us, and voiced the character of Miles Morales in the critically acclaimed Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Composer Mychael Danna is this year’s recipient of the Distinguished Composer Award which is accompanied by a concert featuring a selection of Danna’s most acclaimed and awardwinning scores performed by a local orchestra and led by music director and conductor Kim Kluge. Danna is known for blending non-Western traditions with orchestral and electronic music. He won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for his transcultural score for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi and has scored such films as The Ice Storm, Moneyball, Capote, Monsoon Wedding, Little Miss Sunshine, 500 Days of Summer. Danna often collaborates with his brother Jeff, contributing to films such as The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Breadwinner and Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur and Onward, among others.
Continuing its long tradition of spotlighting behind the scenes artisans, MFF will once again offer several programs dedicated to the craft of filmmaking including a costume design conversation with Academy Award-nominee and Tony winner Paul Tazewell (West Side Story, Hamilton) who will offer a sneak peek to his upcoming film WICKED; a film music panel featuring composers and songwriters including Charles Fox, Lesley Barber, Diane Warren, Taura Stinson, Mychael Danna and Camille Dalmais and Clément Ducol; and the previously announced recipients of Variety and MFF’s Creative Collaborators Award, Jason Reitman and Cinematographer Eric Steelberg who will join Variety’s Jazz Tangcay in conversation about their decades-long partnership. Songwriting and composing duo Dalmais and Ducol are beingrecognized with the Special Achievement in Music Award for their work on EMILIA PÉREZwhich features their original score and 16 original songs.
Individual tickets will go on sale in early October when the schedule and full slate are announced. For more information visit www.middleburgfilm.org or download the Festival’s mobile app.
The Coca-Cola Company returns as the Festival’s Presenting Sponsor. FedEx and Comcast NBC Universal’s Black Experience on Xfinity are this year’s Premier Sponsors. The Washington Postis the Founding Media Sponsor.
